<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Good To Her by Robertdoc</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22902151">Good To Her</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Robertdoc/pseuds/Robertdoc'>Robertdoc</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Knives Out (2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>POV First Person, Spoilers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 12:55:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,146</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22902151</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Robertdoc/pseuds/Robertdoc</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Benoit Blanc had been an ornamental, passive observer to every dysfunctional, vile argument and accusation in the Thrombey estate in the past 72 hours. But when Harlan Thrombey's murderer begins her confession by saying they've always been "good" to her - that's when he couldn't help but look away.</p><p>Then he makes himself read the damning report that would prove her guilt instead. Or so they both thought it would.</p><p>Then when the fog lifts, he's finally free to say exactly what he thinks of them.</p><p>Benoit's POV during a brief but revelatory scene</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>103</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Good To Her</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Based on the small but revealing background detail, whether it was scripted, intentional, meant to mean anything or not, that Benoit Blanc noticeably turns his head away, looks down and only starts reading the 'incriminating' toxicology report after Marta tells the Thrombeys they've "always been good to me" - then when he reads it, he finally stops merely observing them and charges forward to tell them and her how wrong that is [and to stop a wrongful confession too] </p><p>Shippers can probably read some things into his thoughts, but they are mainly meant to convey a mere admiration for Marta [as I trust we all have] even at such an unlikely moment.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Once more, Benoit Blanc took his standard place as an ornamental observer. Likely for the last time as an observer of a Thrombey family gathering. On one level, that was an enormous relief.</p><p>But not because it meant the case was closed. Although that should have been part of it. And yet it wasn’t.</p><p>Having the murderer confess to the victim’s family should have been a nice, easy and fortunate manner of wrapping things up. And yet it didn’t feel that way.</p><p>The last piece of evidence needed to wrap up this case was right in his hands, and that should have been enough to deem this a success. Yet it didn’t feel that way either. And not because he wasn’t the one who found it.</p><p>Surely not because it was given to him willingly by the murderer.</p><p>No – the lousy murderer, in his own words. But not lousy in the same sense he would normally mean.</p><p>Lousy murderers in the normal sense wouldn’t laugh at the name calling. Wouldn’t somehow find a way to laugh like that, in what would probably be the last chance they would have to do so for a long time.</p><p>Wouldn’t make him feel just a tiny bit relieved to be the one to give that to them. If nothing else.</p><p>Still, here they were. Against his advice, here she was. Ready to come clean without a second thought, for the benefit of people who…</p><p>Well, that was irrelevant. Especially considering what their target turned out to be.</p><p>It would have to be irrelevant now.</p><p>Either way, Benoit would watch. As he’d done throughout the last three days in this estate. As he’d done through every lie, insult, fight and backstab in this estate. As he’d done for many a confession at the end of many a case – albeit not a confession quite like this.</p><p>Then it started.</p><p>
  <i>“You’ve always been good to me.”</i>
</p><p>And then his head snapped itself away.</p><p>Every lie and accusation hurled by the Thrombeys, at each other and even at her, wasn’t enough to make him do that. Most every lie and accusation from every criminal, suspect and red herring in his career didn’t make him do that.</p><p>Yet this gigantic whopper of a lie, from the least accomplished liar in this house – this state at the bare minimum – was too much for this career passive observer to observe with his own two eyes any further.</p><p>Maybe because she still didn’t see just how massive a lie it was. Otherwise, the entire family would be a sloppy mess right now.</p><p>Part of him wouldn’t have minded that outcome. That same stubborn part that really didn’t matter now. That honestly shouldn’t still be there at all, for multiple reasons.</p><p>He told her herself that it wasn’t there. Maybe that meant she wasn’t the only lousy liar between them.</p><p><i>“I observe without bias of the head or heart….”</i> he phrased it as, just a mere 36 hours ago.</p><p>He regarded that as a plus when it came to her at first. He regarded it as a sad fact that many law enforcement officials – not including Lieutenant Elliot and Trooper Wagner, of course – might have seen her shoe that first day and hauled her in right then and there…and in some vile cases, not only because of her shoe. Yet Benoit once more chose the path of quiet observation instead.</p><p>Maybe that in of itself was a bias. As was the unease – not immediate suspicion – when he, her and everyone else found out she wasn’t the only one with nothing to gain from Harlan’s death after all.</p><p>As was the strange feeling weirdly akin to pride during ‘the dumbest car chase of all time.’ When she took a much smaller, much slower car and still used its lack of size and speed to evade multiple police vehicles.</p><p>When she took elements that would normally be weaknesses in this setting, and turned them into strengths.</p><p>If this was any other situation or scenario right now, Benoit would more readily admit – not just to himself – that this said everything about Marta Cabrera.</p><p>Someone who’s supposed weaknesses in this particular saga were actually her great strengths. Right down to the kind heart that – hopefully – saved a life even while dooming her own, just to avoid another death on her hands.</p><p><i>Another</i> death.</p><p>And therein lay why this line of thinking, and other…involuntarily reactions…had to remain meaningless. <i>Were</i> meaningless.</p><p>Perhaps if Benoit had remembered that earlier and applied just a little bit extra caution towards her, rather than passive observing, Miss Fran would not be fighting for her life right now. Maybe a medical center wouldn’t have been set on fire.</p><p>Maybe not just the ugliness of today, but certain ugly parts of the previous day could have been headed off at the pass as well. Or maybe been a little less ugly for…all involved.</p><p>But that was moot now. All the rest of it was as well.</p><p>Even the grotesqueries of the biggest lie Harlan Thrombey’s murderer ever told. The lie that had nothing to do with covering up his murder. The lie that should have triggered the biggest regurgitation these parts had ever seen.</p><p>And yet…it was still a lie told by a murderer.</p><p>Told to a family that was grotesque in of itself in many ways, but still were not killers. They may have had weak or otherwise saucey motives to kill Harlan – yet whether by some otherwise buried sense of loyalty, or that they were merely beaten to the punch, they didn’t do it.</p><p>The proof was literally in his hands right now.</p><p>So now it was time to confirm it.</p><p>
  <i>“And what I’m about to say isn’t gonna be easy, and you’re gonna be upset…”</i>
</p><p>After all, there were worse ways for Benoit to occupy his time right now.</p><p>Once he read the proof that her morphine overdose would have killed Harlan before his own knife beat it to the punch, it would be easier to overhear her own confession. Easier to overhear Harlan’s family call her the vilest names for the second time in 24 hours.</p><p>Easier to absorb their sense of self superiority, in supposedly having their most ignorant biases confirmed. In dropping their last bit of pretending to cover up their own most grotesque lie – that they had ever considered her a real ‘part of the family.’</p><p>In completing their entrenchment of their wall of self-denial – or much worse – to tell themselves they actually had been good to her. And that they were the real victims for it.</p><p>Unfortunately, even if she wanted to correct them, she wouldn’t let herself. Because she honestly wouldn’t think she had any right to after what she took from them. Which made sense.</p><p>It should have, anyway.</p><p>It should have already. That was the thing.</p><p>Benoit had her confession. He had two potential victims. He had the family guilty of personally wretched behavior that still didn’t come close to murder. He had the damned toxicology report that would tell him the final bit of proof in a mere matter of seconds.</p><p>
  <i>“But I thought after what you’ve gone through the last few days…”</i>
</p><p>And yet…the fog over this case….this perpetrator….his own mind….and everything else…really should have lifted long before now at this point.</p><p>But it would as soon as he put on his glasses and read. It had to.</p><p>This wasn’t the first murderer he had felt some <i>small</i> level of sympathy for before the cuffs went on. It wouldn’t be the last. This would be another tragic but tiny little pinprick in the larger mosaic of Benoit Blanc’s lore in the long run.</p><p>Once he read the report, helped lead Marta away before the Thrombeys took away every last bit of the bright side of justice being done, and filed the paperwork officially condemning her, the case and every maddening contradiction about it….her….would be….</p><p>Would be….</p><p>Hold on now.</p><p>He read it again.</p><p>And again.</p><p>By the time he saw the numbers a third time….</p><p>By the time he made a movement before his brain could register it for the second time in mere seconds…this time putting his foot forward…</p><p><i>Now</i> he knew why.</p><p><i>Now</i> he knew.</p><p>The fog lifting, the hole filled, the gravitus uncovered, the rainbow shining….every last thing he usually felt when the case and the murderer had fully presented themselves….every last thing he <i>didn’t</i> feel during any of her confessions, and didn’t come close to feeling at the beginning of her latest one…</p><p>Her latest one that didn’t….because <i>she</i> didn’t….</p><p>Which meant it <i>had</i> to be…</p><p>
  <i>“…that you deserved to hear it from me.”</i>
</p><p>Oh Lord.</p><p>Benoit couldn’t let himself hear Marta debase herself for them, even when it was to admit something they both thought she did. Or maybe only one of them was completely sure this whole time.</p><p>Now that there was no maybe in that…now that it, Harlan, them and her no longer had the fog blocking the truth about all of them…</p><p>Now the time to turn away, quietly observe, ignore passive aggressive and aggressive cruelty, and second guess her heart and his was over.</p><p>Now it was time to no longer be an ornament. Or stand by at the callous treatment towards someone who was only an ornament to them.</p><p>And something far worse to one of them in particular.</p><p>But that would be dealt with quite soon enough.</p><p>
  <i>“I – ”</i>
</p><p>“Excuse me!”</p><p>This would be for the rest of them – except dear old Wanetta and…him. </p><p>The rest of them, Benoit now knew for complete certain weren’t killers. That was the only thing he could say to complement them.</p><p>He said he had no biases of the head or heart. He should have clarified, to her and to himself as a reminder, that it was true when it came to investigating their guilt or innocence. Yet now that investigation was over.</p><p>Now he knew <i>exactly</i> what they were innocent of, but what they were still guilty of as well. Now that he knew exactly just how misguided, cruel and undeserving it was to have chosen her as their target.</p><p>Now he could tell them exactly what he thought about it. Now that he knew exactly how undeserved it really was.</p><p>And he could tell her as well.</p><p>Honestly, it would have probably meant more and been more significant if she would have been the one to tell them off. To proclaim her innocence to them, believe it and believe she was worthy of it in every way, instead of finding it out from some stranger who was on the brink of arresting her moments ago.</p><p>Some stranger who had only now figured out – or maybe only now gave himself permission to believe it – that Marta Cabrera was her own savior. And that of others when they had the good sense to let her be one and be grateful for it.</p><p>Like Harlan didn’t. And <i>they</i> didn’t, for so many uglier reasons.</p><p>Maybe if she was the kind of person to see it or tell them off for it, she wouldn’t be Marta Cabrera. Then a whole mess of things would have turned out differently long before now.</p><p>But now Benoit could finally see how much for the better that was. Even amidst all the devastation that still occurred. Not that they would still see that after the truth came out – and other things they no longer had a right to remained lost to them.</p><p>It rightfully shouldn’t have been Benoit’s place to tell them exactly how much they deserved it. There wasn’t time to tell them all of it anyway. Nonetheless, they deserved to hear a bit.</p><p>Or more accurately, she deserved to hear it. Before he had to tell her so many much harder to hear things later. Maybe if – <i>when</i> – it all worked out, this would give her something to cling to for comfort when it all died down.</p><p>She would probably cherish it more than <i>her</i> new money, at the least.</p><p>But that would be sorted out later. First things had to be first. Starting with the most truthful statement Benoit Blanc had ever delivered in his long career. Then a few more supporting statements to further shame whatever tiny pieces they still had that could still feel shame.</p><p>Even that would be going soft on them. And not just because he had to save the worst condemnations for…<i>him</i> later.</p><p>Regardless, this had to be said first. Maybe less in the hope that they eventually believed it, but that Marta did. As she should have been allowed to realize all along….</p><p>And as Benoit would not let himself ignore again.</p><p>“You have <i>not</i> been <i>good to her</i>…”</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>